Philosoft

With regard to NDEs, the problem with this defense is that the soul apparently can interact with the physical world on its own. Among other things, the ability of the soul to "see" material things would seem to entail that it be able to intercept and interpret patterns of photons.

Aquila ka Hecate

christ-on-a-stick,

precisley.No theist, anytime, anywhere, has been able to answer that one satisfactorily.I've sought answers from christians ,shamans,wiccans and muslims-no go.
I was also bothered by the gradual 'loss' of the 'soul' in Alzheimer's patients particularly.
I mean, the 'soul' appears to dribble away!
This is not consistant with the view of the soul as an integral commodity.

Aquila ka Hecate

Double post.
Bloody Back Button.
Sorry.

christ-on-a-stick

LOL...

Another problematic one - people in a PVS (persistent/permanent vegetative state) caused by severe brain injury. Literally just a "shell" - the clinical features are:

Spontaneous respiration and heartbeat
No life support machinery
Body functions normally
Sleep/wake cycles
Swallowing, but not safely or sufficiently (hence tube feeding)
No intellectual activity
No rational responses
No sentience
No cognitive function

This often occurs as a result of a head trauma or prolonged hypoxia (oxygen deprivation as in near drowning etc.) So my question to the theists would be, does this person's "soul" go into some kind of limbo at the time of the accident - for however long before they die? People can remain in PVS for YEARS. Where is the "soul" during this time? People in PVS are *not* aware of anything - there is a complete loss of function of the cerebral cortex - so much for the theory that "the soul" being "eternal"...

the_cave

But it's still a real experience of presence. I might as well argue that if I met you, my experience of you would only be within my brain--and therefore you don't exist--it would merely be my "interpretation" as a Farren-believer that you existed.

Now, of course you do exist outside of my mind, so what could it be that the right frontal parietal lobe experiences when it experiences "divine" presence? Well, it's certainly experiencing some aspect of reality--some part of the fabric of the cosmos, since there it is, having an affectual experience. That's certainly something real. Why can't we call it divine? What else should we call it? It's obviously something very real and human--just like all our emotions are very real and human. Why does that demean their existence? Why does that mean they're meaningless, just because it's inside our heads? Why does what's inside our heads somehow count less than what's outside? And why doesn't anyone think that what's inside our heads is an experience of the same kind of thing that's outside our heads, i.e. spacetime, the field-energy of the universe, etc?

Godless Dave

If I believed in souls (which I don't), I would postulate that the physical brain is a conduit to our souls. Brain damage prevents the brain from accessing the memories, but the memories might still be there. Can't say whether you'd get them back after death. A soul might have no use for memories, but merely be the "force" that gives us life, vitality, and conscience.

IIRC, damage to the hippocampus seems to inhibit the ability to retrieve memories without "erasing" the memories themselves. But to me that just suggests that memories are stored elsewhere in the brain, not outside it.

Philosoft

How do you establish with certainty that the parietal lobe is "experiencing some aspect of reality"? Your claim amounts to some non-physical "thing" reaching into our heads and poking at various neurons. How could you possibly verify this?

Why don't you establish what "it" is first?

Who said brain-states are meaningless? The point is that brain-states are not necessarily indicative of objective reality.
Even if we consider this possibility, surely there are still brain-states that are not directly caused by something external. How do you tell which ones are externally caused and which are not?